Politics and Culture

April 20, 2017

A dramatic dive into the politically correct

If you've been watching the latest (season 6) Homeland, then this piece by Judith Miller is worth a read:

In its sixth season, Homeland went rogue. What began six years ago as a gripping, edgy dramatization of the war against Islamic terror waged by well-intentioned, but deeply flawed intelligence officers took a dramatic dive this season into the politically correct. Intelligence officials who risk their lives to prevent another Sept. 11 are anti-Islamic and untrustworthy. Israel is a racist state determined to oppress Palestinians and thwart America’s nuclear deal with Iran. The nation’s first female president—which must have seemed like a sure thing last summer when the show was initially scripted—turns out to be not what she seems. American Muslim communities are demonized victims of an overzealous FBI. While al-Qaida and its even more virulent successor, Islamic State, were the enemy in the first five seasons, the enemy in season six is no longer IS, but us....

Despite sterling performances—plus the introduction of two superb new characters, alt-right broadcaster Brett O’Keefe (Jake Weber), and President-elect Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel), Season 6 was a dramatic, disappointing departure from the tone, themes, and often-discomforting honesty of the show’s earlier years. If frantic rewriting ensued when its creators misjudged the outcome of America’s presidential race, its writers seemed to have panicked in the wake of Donald Trump’s stunning election upset and accusations that their Emmy-winning series was “anti-Muslim,” and hence, feeding candidate Trump’s ugly assault on Muslims, refugees, immigrants, and America’s tradition of openness and tolerance.

Suddenly, as actor Patinkin acknowledged in a recent interview on NPR’s WBUR in Boston, the show’s writers and actors concluded that Homeland’s focus on Islamist terror was “part of the problem of the Islamophobia.” “It became very painful to the writers, and to all of us,” he said. “A tremendous amount of attention has been paid trying to be part of the cure instead of part of the problem.” In Season 6, the writers were “tremendously successful” in having reversed the show’s traditional themes and designations of good and evil. During Season 6, he asserted, viewers came to understand that “the guilty ones are certainly not the Muslim community, certainly not the refugees or the immigrants who have come here, but the white male membership, even of the intelligence community and other parts of our government.”

The charge that the show demonizes Muslims by focusing on radical Islamic terror is as old as Homeland itself. In 2012, a Salon reviewer called Homeland “TV’s most Islamophobic show.” In the Washington Post two seasons later, Laura Durkay, a New York City-based “writer, filmmaker, and activist” for AlterNet, Gay City News, and the Socialist Worker, called it the “most bigoted show on television” and accused it of carelessly trafficking in “absurd and damaging stereotypes.” This was no surprise, Durkay added, since Homeland was not only based on an Israeli show titled Prisoners of War, automatic grounds for suspicion in leftist circles, but was created by Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa, and former Israeli paratrooper Gideon Raff, the team that produced 24 after Sept. 11—a show whose hero, Jack Bauer, an intelligence officer who tortured and took no prisoners, channeled America’s fury and fear in the wake of its deadliest terrorist attack.

I watched because it was gripping television, but right from the start of this season it was clear that the politics were a big big problem. It's not that Carrie was working with a fresh-faced idealistic young Muslim - by itself that wouldn't be an issue - it's what happens next: said youth is blown up in his van in New York and framed as a suicide bomber by the "deep state" - the intelligence services. It's not just a dramatic dive into the politically correct, then: it's a full-blown gift to every conspiracy theorist out there...the US intelligence services are framing innocent Muslims by planting bombs in New York. On top of that we have Mossad teaming up with the CIA to persuade President-elect Keane that those nice Iranians are reneging on their nuclear deal by trading with the North Koreans, which of course they're not. And Carrie is quite happy to voice her opinion that the US has messed up since 9/11, with their ill-conceived and counter-productive "war on terror".

So yes, it's quite a turn-around. It also - what with all the paranoia and the occasional bursts of extreme violence - made for excellent viewing, if you could put aside the unfortunate political changes.

Until the last episode, that is, when all the absurdities came out, and the program effectively jumped the shark. We had an attempted assassination of the President-elect by rogue military elements: a botched right-wing military coup, in other words. And then the new President, till now as President-elect a heroic figure battling the evils of the far-right and the CIA and the hate-jocks alongside Carrie and Saul Berenson, turns out to be a ruthless power-crazed despot once in office. Dar Adal, the CIA nasty - now in jail -who'd enabled the coup and the hate-jocks but baulked at the last minute at the prospect of an actual assassination, tells Saul that yes, he maybe went too far, but he feels he wasn't wrong. She was a bad 'un, this Keane woman.

So - a police state, and civil war. Bah. And no problem with Islamist radicalism, only the misjudged responses of US intelligence.

Comments

'It's not just a dramatic dive into the politically correct, then: it's a full-blown gift to every conspiracy theorist out there...the US intelligence services are framing innocent Muslims by planting bombs in New York'.

Which is all the more irresponsible given that Trump and his minions are now tweeting about the 'deep state' fabricating evidence of their collusion with Putin.

Fuck me.

What a time to be alive.

On 'Homeland' and its supposed Islamophobia, I seem to recall that in Series 1 one of the contributory factors to Brody's radicalisation in captivity is the fact that the then-DCI and future VP - William Walden - orders a drone strike on a madrassa full of children.

In Series 3, Fara Sherazi comes to the forefront as an Iranian-American CIA analyst who is treated with suspicion because she wears a headscarf. And yet she turns out to be effective at her job, and loyal to her adopted country.

Meanwhile in Series 4 Carrie Matheson is forcibly confronted by a USAF pilot over the strike she orders that ends up wiping out a wedding, which kills relatives of the Pakistani medical student Aayan Ibrahim. Aayan - a gentle soul who is grieving for his family, but also appalled by jihadi violence - then gets seduced by Carrie, and murdered by Haissan Haqqani. All of which contributes to Carrie's own psychological problems.

Push ahead to Series 5, not only are the main villains the Russians, but one of the most upstanding characters in the plot is Numan, the Turkish-born hacker who sticks by his own ideals.

I gave up after Season 1, I never bought the motivation of Damian Lewis' character. I followed it by watching the original Israeli version, but even that lost its way partway through (more accurately, it focused more on the effects of the families). Then again, I gave up on 24 after Season 1 as well.

I watched season 1 but like Tim N I couldn't believe in the Damian Lewis character. (For one thing I couldn't help but see Richard Winters.) Lewis played a Marine traumatised into treason by the death of a boy he had befriended in an air strike. The premise seemed lazy to me - as though American servicemen aren't aware that such bad stuff happens and have a mental collapse when they encounter it. To me it seemed to capture the typical Leftist critique - that people can only support the war if they are either utterly callous or uninformed about the tragedies. Shallow stuff really.
I gave up after S1, my wife soldiered on but then gave up when the Damian Lewis character was killed. The context for that was also dodgy - a US-Iran deal that felt to me like pure pro-Obama Admin propaganda.